Aggregate corporate profits are the accounting consequence of macro flows: Profits = Investment − Government Saving − Foreign Saving + Net Dividends − Household Saving. This page rebuilds that identity annually from the NBS flow-of-funds accounts. The contrast with the U.S. (where post-2020 margins lean on the fiscal deficit) is stark: China's profits rest overwhelmingly on extraordinarily high capital formation, are dragged most by world-record household saving, and get a persistent boost from the current-account surplus.
This graph decomposes the gross profits of China's corporate sector (nonfinancial enterprises + financial institutions) into economically meaningful macro components. From the flow-of-funds saving–investment identity (the sum of sectoral gross savings equals gross capital formation plus the current-account balance), it follows that:
Gross Corporate Profit = Gross Capital Formation − Government Saving − Foreign Saving + Net Dividends − Household Saving + Statistical Discrepancy.
Gross corporate profit is defined as corporate gross saving (retained gross profit after tax and interest, including consumption of fixed capital) plus net dividends paid — comparable to the U.S. page's "net profit + capital consumption" concept. Foreign saving equals the current-account balance with the sign flipped: China's persistent surplus makes foreign saving negative, i.e. the rest of the world continuously "borrows" from China, which contributes positively to corporate profits.
Informed takeaways: in China's macro structure, capital formation is by far the largest accounting source of corporate profits — the profit-side mirror of investment-led growth — while extraordinarily high household saving is the biggest drag. Before 2015 the general government ran positive gross saving (a net saver, suppressing corporate profits); as the broad fiscal stance turned expansionary, government saving flipped negative after 2020 and began supporting profits the way the U.S. deficit does. Toggle % of GDP to see the long-run structural shifts.
The flow-of-funds accounts (non-financial transactions) record real-side flows by institutional sector, annually from 1992, with a one-to-two-year publication lag and revisions after economic censuses. The statistical discrepancy is the gap between total saving and capital formation (including small external capital transfers), shown separately so the bars sum exactly to zero.